Tips for Machine Quilting an Allover Design

"Hi, I'm Linda with American Patchwork and Quilting, and I'm here with Angela Walters, who is an ambassador for Handi Quilter. And I'm so excited about the allover quilting designs that you have. Can you give me some tips on how I might use those or where they might be best used?" "Absolutely. Well, I think an allover design is great, especially for a quilt that you're in a little bit of a rush for, because they're really quick. Or if you have a quilt that you want to add a little bit of movement or enhance the whole quilt top. And so the design I have to show you today is a fun design that uses wavy lines to create a really cool effect, and I actually used it in the quilt behind us on the wall." "Perfect." "Now, here's what it looks like. It just has some wavy lines with some filler, but it's so easy once you see it put together. And the great thing about this design is that it's very versatile so you can use it on the borders of your quilt, as well. And here you can see I've done just that." "I tried this design, and what I was disappointed in when I tried it was that my lines weren't spaced evenly." "Well, let me show you. I quilt out the designs and I'll tell you how you can help that. Sound good? Alright. Well, what I'm going to do first is go ahead and quilt a square. That's going to be my quilting area. This design runs from edge to edge, so it's either going to be used throughout the whole quilt or bigger blocks or something like that. So quilting out that square will give me the sides that I need to use as my guide, so do that real quick. Now when you're thinking about this design, all your quilting are wavy designs and a filler, so if you kind of think of it that way it won't be so intimidating. But you're going to start down just a little bit from the top and you're just going to quilt a nice wavy line that works it's way back and forth just like that until you run to the edge of that area. Then you're going to travel down just a bit about a 1/4" or so, then echo it. Now at this point you can echo it as many times as you'd like. I usually do three, but if you want to do four or whatever, it doesn't matter. So here's my first group of three. Now I'm going to travel down just a bit and quilt another wavy line that's the reverse image of the top. Now don't let that part sound confusing. Just where this line comes down, this line's going to go up. I basically want just a pod shape roughly. It's not going to look perfect. It just needs to have a little bit of that look." "So it doesn't have to be perfectly symmetrical to the line above." "No, definitely not. Now before I move on I'm going to fill in this area, and one that I love to use is this kind of arc shape that tucks into the line and moves across. So here I'm kind of tucking it in, making sure to pull it down. And that's just because I like the contrast of the direction change, but if you don't like this design or you're really having trouble with that, you can do something different. In fact when I get to the next pod, I'll show you what I'm talking about. And again make sure, you almost want to travel on those lines. Now if you get to where you don't like that design or what something a little easier maybe like a figure eight or wishbone." "Oh, I see." "You can fill it with whatever you want. Really, it doesn't matter. I'm going to finish out that section just by echoing it. Now you talked about having trouble keeping your lines consistent. I will say with the echoing, one thing I'm doing is trying to use that foot as a guide. If I can line that foot up with the line I just quilted that will help keep it consistent. And just know that it isn't going to be perfect, you just want a nice flow. Don't stress out about it too much. And I'm just going to go ahead and fill it in--work my way across. So you're making your sections and then filling it in before you move on." "Okay, so you'd be working down the whole length of the quilt as you go." "Yes, and I like to work from top to bottom, but you know if you're working within a block or something or you could do a different direction if you like, but with a long arm it's a lot easier to do this in a horizontal motion. So let me finish up this area. And it's so quick." "And it looks so good." "And you could do it more densely, as well, so you could do it dense or less dense, you could make those lines further apart. Now if I were actually quilting this on a quilt, I would fill in above that with something because I want that consistently filled, but I think once you master it you can find a lot of fun variations that you can do with it." "That is wonderful, and it's so great to have kind of a signature design to go back to every time then when you just want to get a quilt top done. Well, thank you so much for showing us that design and I hope this helped you to have some ideas on how to allover quilt your quilt."